septembrie 25, 2011

utterly

'The complexity really lies in the fact that there are hundreds or maybe even thousands of different types of neurons, which are arranged in highly-organised patterns, and which connect to each other in very specific ways. Now, a new technique is emerging that enables neuroscientists to trace these kinds of connections by enlisting help from an unlikely source – viruses. To understand why this approach is so exciting, we need to consider the scope of the problem it can help solve. This begins with individual neurons themselves. Neurons are polarised – they have an end for inputs and an end for outputs. Each of these may be branched to give thousands of independent sites of input and output. For any given neuron, there are other neurons that connect to it (information flows from all those neurons into our subject neuron) and other neurons that it connects to (information flows from our subject neuron out to all these neurons). But neurons are not all the same...'